JvE blogremarks

Last month I wrote a blogpost with the 12 common mistakes about pitching & idea selling. I got some quality feedback on this, which I obviously love about blogging.  Now I like to take this topic into the more positive side. I took some of the companies I now work with as an example and did some thinking on them. What are they doing that I love? How did they get in? We also have had some excellent businesses coming in with a excellent pitch but where we did not end up doing business with. Also some examples of them. Prepare This is one of the most serious recommendations I have. Prepare the meeting. You can do this while reading the corporate website, and some other stuff your propably know, but try to dive deeper into the topics you are interested in.

For instance:

- Try to figure out what the social strategy is - What kind of marketingcampaigns they run - Which brands are in portfolio, and which of them have the most clear focus 

A good and thoughtfull preparation makes you look smarter in a conversation, and we won't have to waste time on much introduction. 

Working as a business developer also gets you in the frontline of every company that wants to do business with us from the perspective that we should be their customer. And believe me; there are a lot of companies, startups or temporary comittees of people pitching ideas with us. I've decided to take these conversations - wheter they were really high level or just informal coffee meetings - into a blogpost about common mistakes made here. A brief introduction to 12 most common mistakes in random order. NDA's Sure, I like to hear a bright idea, or a wildly innovative concept. But what I hate is when people think these ideas are billable. Some of these startups even ask to sign NDA's. We took the policy not too by default, cause we believe ideas are very hard to protect in an open and (very) competative business. 

We don't pay for your ideas Let's say this again; we do not pay for ideas. Especially not on ideas on operational stuff we can do ourselves. Such as; marketing, social media and other very operational things. Please, give us a prototype, or even better; a working example. Or, best; the project running for some other client who is so satisfied to write a review or recommendation about it. We don't want to hear your full story There are a lot of small companies who take an hour or so to chat with me about their product or proposition. Actually; I like these conversations, also on Skype or IM. What I hate are small businesses filling an hour of my time with a monologue of the things they did, how they came to start this business and how good they are doing it. Please, stop. Introduce yourself in less than 4 lines and then ask as much questions as you can to see wheter your product is actually needed in my company. Knowledge driven This is a knowlegde driven economy. We assume the data in your presentation are hardfacts, based on serious research. Not some N=1 sample or vague assumption. When you do vague assumptions to an MT or board you might get away with it, when you pitch this to a product manager or marketeer you won't. Don't tell me what the average spent is per user when I have more hardfacts on this. Be absolutely sure about numbers. You won't get away with this talking to experts in the field. Tailor made Obviously some products are tailor made. But too often I hear lines like; 'yeah we can do this, it is all tailor made.' Most people saying this try to prove their product is very flexible, but in general I think it's a bad idea. Custom made sounds like two things. One; the actual product misses out critical features and/or two: the product is very expensive and only suitable for one client Vague 'We have a higly adoptable, custom build frontend with some API's to extract data and integrated social media solutions which work out of the box.'' Yeah right. Get to know us Sometimes I get visitors who are very eager to make an appointement but then pitch their ideas with a total wrong concept of what we are actually doing as a business. When we are a B2C company, don't pitch me ideas for a B2B sollution. I won't be able to change strategy here. Sometimes I will forgive this, as it is hard to really see the sheer amount of brands etc. we have inhouse, but sometimes this gets me very annoyed in a bad way. Please do your homework. This usually has a correlation to the second thing I mention above; I don't want to hear your full story. Underestimation This has a lot to do with the thing mentioned above. Please, do not underestimate my company and/or the things we do. One example; people who actually think that social media is entirely new to us. Your wrong.  Exec level A lot of companies want to get in touch with the execs of our company. This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. 1. Execs seem to make descions but they don't. While my exec points out he's complete overhead in many conversations, I take him very serious on that. 2. You won't be working with exec's. A lot of exec's will listen to your story and then decide whether and who they will send you to at a lower level. Save yourself some time and skip the usually very busy schedule of an exec. 3. I personally am not interested in your relationship with the exec (See below) and I don't want to talk about the business club you guys met.

One of the most obvious reasons I do not love Facebook so much anymore is the sheer amount of Facebook fanpages I am connected to (also because of my job as a business developer social) a lot of fanpages, all challenging me with the same stuff. This leaves me with a huge amount of Fanpagecontent, without me actually want to connect with this content. And I am affraid I might miss out friend-content.

I think Zuckerberg knows he's kinda wrong about brands connecting with their fans on social media. Brands are not meant for social media, and neither do Fanpages actually contribute to the social atmosphere. They only represent social activity as long as we can take it. (like & win!).

I know 'agile' and 'SCRUM' are the hypes of 2011, but hey; let's discuss it now we can ;-)

I’ve been discussing this with business owners a lot; should you be broadcasting the same content on different (social) channels, or should you opt to diverse the channels into segments where you all have this unique content. This is a tough one. You might want to think there is one center of the universe, the place you want to drive all your visirots to. This is usually the place where you actually earn money, so in Sanoma’s case this is usually a magazine or a website. But this is a limited thought, indeed. Let’s review it a little bit closer. For obvious P&L reasons it is neccesary to use all the marketingchannels you have and drive visitors to places where you actually cash in. The most businesses I’ve seen have a lot going on; the website + blog, their magazine, a weekly (or worse, daily) newsletter and their social presence, such as Twitter and Facebook. More and more channels may be very innovative (hey, let’s start a business page on Google+!) but tend to bring in more work. So it is neccerarly to review all these channels, all the time. I don’t have the time to do all this stuff’’, I hear from some of the editors who are responsible for some of the channels. Ok, fair enough. But then you did not clearly make a choice on ROI, and you certainly did not make it ‘all the time’. You just thought you did not had the time. A lot of businesses I see, the marketingdepartment does not evaluate their efforts in terms of ROI. They do not ask editors how much time it costs to create this marketingcampaign, they do not ask how much time they need to update the Twitter account and manage questions etc. Maybe the’ll take this into their plans for next years (‘we want to focus more on social media’) but it turns out they do not often evaluate their marketingstrategy and their ROI. This could be a fairly simple process. Let’s do an example here.

Let’s say the brand has 15.000 newsletter subscribers and about 5.000 of Facebook fans. Reasonable numbers. Let’s also assume that an editor of the magazine needs about half a day to send out the newsletter to all the clients. This includes writing copy, sending out tests, checking wheter all the links work, etc. etc.

Now let’s go into the math and check stats.

The newsletter is out weekly and give about a 30% open rate. 20% of the people opening the newsletter actually clicks on one item. This item links to the website. The eCPM on the website is about $3,-  ROI on half a day work is then (15.000*0,3)*0,2=900 so you earn a mere $2,70 on the website. 

Let’s see what you can do with the 5k of Facebook fans. In one week, the editor posts about 4 updates which cost her about 10 minutes each = 40 minutes a week. 70% of the fans are engaged ((on average) so all the post in one week do have 14.000 views and with an average clickrate of 45% this is 6.300 views which would bring you to somewhat more than $18,-.

It’s that simple. Should you be making choices based on these numbers? Yes and no. I can immagine that the newsletter also is available to brands wanting to pay for actual spots, so this drives up the value of the newsletter. But in my example, social brings up 6 times more in value, in about 6 times less time. That seems like a good deal. Tweaking your performance on social a bit, and you could easlily double up the efford. But hey, evaluate all the newsletters and social performance takes you to another challenge; get all the data and interpret it in the right way. But I think that should be your biggest + as a product/marketing manager.

Going back to my original question; do you want your content strategy to be linear, or should you be ‘storytelling’ different things on different networks? I think it’s safely to assume that this really does not matter, as long as you try to evaluate the whole contentstrategy as an example I just did above. Try to see what kind of marketingmix of different channels works best for you. Tweak the performance, but not on daily bases. Try to see with the editors what they think is the best way to go here. Maybe they like tweaking up a little bit more as well.

Can Hyves be the place for youngsters & social media experts? The first group because they feel the network is still 'for them' and the second group beiin curious about the dying guy lying on the street after he got hit by a gigantic blue FB truck. Now the most siginificant question is; can they survive alongside FB? STIR is the Dutch Comscore, and gives some nice insights on Hyves' activity. And yes, they have a problem.

Amount of pageviews per user

I see a lot of business owners having ideas to 'make them social'. What they do is think about stuff they can do to make a better appearence on Facebook or sometimes Twitter. But they better rethink something else. Is their story really about the brand? Or is it all about sales? Driving on the social media wave is really about a thin line between customers and commercial meanings. People will see you through when you're message isn't real. Think of this annoying guy at a party, trying to convince you about investing in his startup. Or buying his lame product. You do not want this guy on Facebook. Neither do you want you to spam his stuff on Facebook.

One big fat disclaimer here to start with; the update is pretty huge, and is difficult to summarize cause there are still some features that are only announcements so far. Last Thursday Facebook did some updates on their annual f8 conference. Last time they did public announcements it was about Skype and their integration with video chat. This time it was more exciting with updates on both the front-end (new profiles) but also in the backend. Ill start of with the backend, cause I think these are more interesting to see. Also to get a better overview what FB is trying to acomplish here and how to utilize this.

The Open Graph is now more social

Open Graph is a protocol which is used to define objects on the Internet. Facebook already used this to define 20 different objects to like on facebook, such as films, books, places, albums, food, games, products, cars and universities. By pressing the ‘like’ you could save an object to FB, for instance; you press the like button on a movie on IMDB and it is stored within your profile as a movie you like. With the f8 update Facebook announced they launch the feature which allows applications to add a action to an object.

So, this example shows the architecture of a recipe application you could build on top of the new Facebook by using new selfdifined Open Graph objects. You can also alter the actions, for instance; ‘want to cook’ or; ,,add this to my wishlist’’.  This is a great way to enrich applications, also cause you only need a one-time application confirmation to post these updates to both your wall and the new ticker.

With some work, you can create updates like this;

,,Jos just added the Lumix DMC-TZ20 digital camera to his wishlist on Kieskeurig.nl.’’

Or;

,,Jos now listens to the Kooks on Spotify’’

Or

,,Jos now reads [article] on NU.nl’’

Basically; the possibilities are nearly endless. To demonstrate this, Facebook already built integrations on Spotify (enabling this feature will post all the Spotify activity to your wall/ticker) and Netflix (did not test). For more in depth inspiration, check out the excellent technical guide. 

Facebook interface

Facebook did a lot of effort in further streamlining the UI on the website itself. Most important? The ticker now shows all the updates of your friends, without the intrusiveness of the wall and Facebook did a remake on the entire profile page which now is more visual, and shows up the applications you use often. Also, the timeline does a good trip down memory lane.

I could go on forever on all the UI updates, but please check this huge picture for a overview on all the updates.

Short conclusion

As Facebook evolves, they now try to create a more social web by connecting all the dots, such as applications from third parties with rich content. By storing all this data they also get more very rich insights on the behaviour of their users. But, it also enables specific social features for content such as the recipe example they set up as an example. ''Social by design'' is now one step closer, and easily to create. Of course; their will be some hickups and bugs here & there, such as localisation of the setup with all the nouns. 

'Make your website social by putting social buttons everywhere so users can easily share all your great content with their audience'

I hate this. I think this is not only a bad advice, I think it is a common mistake. 

In general; we are way too optimistic about content. Most content on the web is not worth sharing at all. Unfortunately, social buttons are now seen everywhere on the web, even on places with content you wouldn't want to share in a million years.

I think social buttons are having a hard time anyway. As we come increasingly aware of our social-online enviroment, we become more aware of the fact that we do not want to share everything we see. As social networks rise, all your friends gather in one place, where image is very important. It makes great sense to share your location when your in a hotspot like a beachclub or at a Coldplay concert. It's makes sense to post your holiday pictures of yourself lying on the best beach or hanging out with your friends (tag them!) but it is considered unlogical to share all kind of non-conformic content. It's unlogical to share 'bad' or 'boring' content and people will not respond to any of your shares. 

1. People like to share personal, weird or cute stuff 2. People update with great preoccupation (will this be socially accepted?)

Lately I gave a lot of workshops to my fellow-workers aka collegues and one thing that struck my mind is the continious faith in social media. There seems to be some kind of trend that a lot of marketing- and productmanagers still believe that they have to press the one-green button that says: social on it in order for them to succeed.

Let me get on thing very clear here: social is no rocket science. Neither is it a live-saving opportunity. Or, as I read on Timan Rebel's excellent blog: it is not gonna save your business. I've seen a lot of productmanagers who are looking for the quick wins on their product. Well, that's an excellent idea. But skip social. It is very time consuming, and when people hate your product, they will (or might already be doing so) tell it on the social channels they use.

I've also - unfortunately - seen a number of so called 'experts' whom did not have any marketingknowlegde (or at least; I could not find it on Google). I think there is not so much as an expert. You can do very well in your marketing, or your online strategy. But that just doesn't make you a social expert. If you're an online strategist, continue with it and change your profile on Twitter to something else than; social expert. You're so much more than that. 

So:

- Don't seek for a holy grail. There is no green button - Quick wins? Not on social - Don't trust anyone with 'social expert' or a combination of those words in their Twitter bio.

Imagine yourself being part of a creative agency. But then a truely creative agency. One that has - almost - no boundaries. True creativity comes with good clients. Clients who believe everything you say. Imagine clientX. They have a big budget, which is good anyway. You and the team do a quick roundup of ideas. Maybe even in Don Draper style with a drink. The client trusts your creativity, but they heard something they like to do: a viral. A viral would sell itself. This should be free advertising budget. That sounds good. You can do virals in bascially two different ways:

1. You make a video with a client but the client does not want to do something that actually is viral, they only want the viral effect. The video does not become viral because it isn't gross, stupid or lame. 2. You make a good viral. It becomes a little bit viral, and it comes out it was you. The video stalls after a week.

You brief the two options to the client. You do not want to do a viral. It is a pain in the ass to create a awesome one. But the client insists. He wants a viral which does not comply to any of the above rules. He wants a new approach from you. So you sit down with the team again. You consider yourself give back your assignment, cause you cannot do it. But then you meet a guy who has a brilliant idea. You pitch it to your client. He is amazed, also to see the third video come to Huffington Post. 

Never say Google is lagging behind anything. Ok, Buzz and Wave were not the best products out there but Google+ is a surprising product. You might already understood: this is a Google fanpost. Beiing the social media guru (hahaha - oh really? - Mmright) in the company I was quite surprised with Google launching their brand new social network Google+. After getting an invitation from collegues (thanks @RVW) I did my job in inviting some more collegues and put Google+ to the test. The answer so far? Yeah!  Pros 1. The interface. Finally Google put some real effort in making a elegant, simple interface which looks like a product you actually want to use.  2. Circles. The circles seem to be the alternative to the full Facebook wall where brands, friends and relatives seem to be struggling for attention. The Facebook wall on 'important' and 'most recent' seems to be not working for me: most important does not show me important updates of people I'm actually interested in. And it skips things I wanted to see, such as updates from the NU.nl fanpage. Circles does a great job  3. Focus on sharing (new) stuff. While Facebook focusses on the question 'what are you doing?' Google+ asks: 'share something new' which is a better angle on the social web cause it let's the personal view out of it. So you won't see the 'look-at-me-posing-at-this-cool-beachclub' pictures on your 'wall'. Or at least: I did not see any updates from friends of this kind. 4.  Google did launch an excellent product from scratch. This is major, cause it took Facebook years to become what they are today. You might assume that it only gets better & better from this point. At least: that's the thing on Google: Youtube, Gmail and maps might not have been much 'improved' for the eye, but mind you: most of the products get really strong updates making the product more usable or better looking. 5. You cannot add stuff that does not belong on Google+ like your Foursquare checkin's or - teh horror - your tweets. Cons 1. Google contacts integration. I have a lot of contacts in my Gmail I do not want to get in touch with on Google+ So this is quite useless. Google would do a great job in implementing a way to import your Facebook friends in Google+ This seems to be ready, although Facebook does - for obvious reasons? - support this anymore 2. Force Picasa. When I registered, Google+ wanted me to use Picasa. Not that I use it (Flickr is imo still one of the best webapps out there) but from Google perspective this seems a logic step in integrating all their producs on Google+. I think a consumer should always have a choice about what kind of services they want Google+ to integrate with. 3.  Where's the plus? Google has to make clear why the network is there. The user experience is good, but it is hard to summarize the 'new' social network as a one-entity. Where's the pro againtst Twitter or Facebook? What issue does Google+ solve that Facebook cannot?  4. Why does nothing happen when I click the +1 button? Google made a lot of effort in rolling out the +1 button for publishers, but it seems it isn't connected to your Google+ account right now. Strange. I am sure they will fix it in a short amount of time.